Your Personal Baby Name Assistant

Nymbler is a new baby name web site that allows you to search for baby names based on popularity, styles and origins as well as your personal tastes. Nymbler allows you to find your favorite names and share them with your friends and family.
http://www.nymbler.com

Send Letters to your Friends and Family for Free

Start by addressing the envelope below then write a letter to a friend or relative.
eSnailer will print, envelope, stamp, and send your letter via regular U.S. postal mail 100% free of charge.

http://www.esnailer.com

SOA bogged down by spend-happy worst practices

San Francisco – Analysts practically wear themselves out saying "service-oriented architecture is something you do, not something you buy," but during last week's Burton Group Catalyst Conference it became clear too many users are trying to take a shortcut to SOA by buying the latest got-to-have-it software package.

Burton analysts stressed that you don't need to chase after some enterprise service bus with every possible widget or try to support the latest chic Web services standards in order to achieve service orientation.

"SOA is an enterprise architecture style, not an application architecture style," said Anne Thomas Manes, Burton Group vice president and research director. She estimated it could take 20 years to realize all the benefits of service orientation, which she listed as:


Increased flexibility and agility
Improved application quality
Reduced time to market
Increased ease of doing business
Improved consistency in systems

http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid26_gci1263065,00.html?track=sy80

SOA provides data integration, BPM for prisons

When visualizing success stories for service-oriented architecture (SOA), more efficient processing of new inmates arriving at county jails and state and federal prisons probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

However, SOA is at the heart of business operations for Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which designs, builds and manages prisons and detention centers throughout the U.S., and runs the fifth largest correctional system in the country. John Pfeiffer, vice president and CIO of CCA, points out that in the first two months after implementation of an SOA system that handles data collection on arriving prisoners, errors were reduced by 95 percent and processing time was reduced by 25 percent.

In Your Face

There comes a time in every young person's life—soon after teething, usually—when she must make a momentous decision: MySpace or Facebook? One's preference is a matter of taste. MySpace, if you ask me, is a spam-infested state of nature. The average user page comes with a crapload of embedded music and video players, some seizure-inducing wallpaper, and a bunch of friend requests from "models" who want to "get to know you." (It also happens to be nearly three times the size of Facebook.) Facebook, on the other hand, is much less customizable but also a lot more reassuring. The interface is comfy, sturdy, and attractive without being showy—the kind of social network you'd bring home to Mom. Think of it as the Volvo of social networking.

But a few weeks ago, Facebook pulled a MySpace-like maneuver. The site tore down its walls and opened its pages to outside developers. A new tool kit called Facebook Platform allows any programmer—a bored student or a multimillion-dollar corporation—to peel back the site's breastplate, poke around, and rearrange the innards. None of the nearly 900 (and counting) programs released so far are particularly life-changing—among the most popular add-ons are a "Graffiti" program (downloaded by more than 3.3 million people as of this writing) that lets you doodle other people's profiles and an "Honesty Box" that lets your friends say, anonymously, what they really think of you. Collectively, though, these programs are hugely significant. If the site figures out a smart way to deploy these mini applications, it will be more than just a social network. Facebook will turn into a do-everything site with the potential to devour the whole Internet.

Gartner: SOA governance remains crucial

Paolo Malinverno, Research Vice President for Gartner, took time out at Gartner's Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit 2007 in Nashville to discuss the fundamentals of SOA governance. He covers a broad range of application integration issues and considers governance to be the perpetual backbone of a successful SOA.

http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/qna/0,289202,sid26_gci1261208,00.html?track=sy80